Ideathon: Hacking Discrimination

Please save the date for Ideathon: Hacking Discrimination, which will take place on Feb. 2nd from 4:00pm to 10:00pm (with registration from 3:30pm to 4:00pm). Microsoft New England will host the event at their Cambridge office, located at 225 Main St., Kendall Square, 4th floor. The Ideathon is co-organized by BAMIT, MIT, Harvard, Microsoft New England, Women in Machine Learning, and the MIT Alumni Association.

We invite student-led teams to brainstorm solutions to a wide variety of issues around discrimination and racism in America, from the racial tension between law enforcement and communities of color that has been captured by the media to the continued social and economic roadblocks that have impacted the lives of minorities and has motivated MIT President Reif’s recent call to action - ‘What Are We To Do?”.

The Ideathon will highlight the intersection of big data, algorithm bias, discrimination, and race in America, while also exploring innovative ways to address these important issues through technology. Potential pitch ideas include: promoting safe police stops through technology; facilitating mentor & resource matching for underrepresented minorities in STEM using technology; addressing the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields; and exploring algorithmic bias in machine learning. If you have additional ideas that you would like to contribute, please let us know.

Registration information will be provided soon. If you have any questions, please reach out to members of the planning team: Marzyeh Ghassemi, MIT, CSAIL, mghassem@csail.mit.edu and Elaine Harris, harris.ej@gmail.com (BAMIT).

The MIT Sloan Women in Management are hosting "Breaking the Mold" on Saturday, Feb. 25th - a hackathon focused on solving the issue of unconscious bias (http://www.mitbreakingthemold.com/). We encourage teams to also develop projects for this event.

We also recognize the unfortunate conflict with the Momentum events occurring on the same date of the Ideathon. We are working with Microsoft to ensure that attendees of Momentum can join our program at the conclusion of that event.